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Facebook and Beacon: a fascinating privacy case study

In case you are not up on all of the news surrounding Facebook and it's recently-added, controversial advertising mechanism, Beacon, it's quite a fascinating tale. I find it interesting to see these issues of online privacy being played out right in front of us in real time. If you have a Facebook account, and are not familiar with what's going on, you definitely want to check this out, because it involves a way that Facebook tracks your online activities, even if you are not logged into or actively using Facebook. There are lots of articles on the web that can give you the detailed scoop.  Here's one you can read if you would like an good summary of the situation:

"Facebook finally lets users turn off privacy-invading ads" from machinist.salon.com

Suffice it to say that Facebook implemented a system that shares your online habits with advertisers and even with your friends and others on your network via your profile. This tracks your online habits even outside of the Facebook application. So, imagine you go purchase something at Overstock.com and all of the sudden your profile shows everyone what you just bought.  Plus, the really crazy part is that this functionality is enabled by default on your account unless you OPT-OUT. Until a couple of days ago, they didn't even have a way for you to opt-out. But, now you can, so if you don't want Facebook tracking your online activities and publishing them to all of your friends and network, you need to visit your privacy settings and opt out of Beacon.

To do this, log into Facebook, click "privacy" and the edit the settings for "External Websites" at the bottom of the list.

To be fair to Facebook, you can read their own apology and explanation of the situation here on their blog (also linked in the article listed above).

What do you guys think about this issue with Facebook? Leave us a comment.

Posted on Fri, December 7, 2007 by Tim Wall

4 comments (Add your own)

1. Ryan Imel wrote:
It's nice that they apologized, but it still stands as a great example of how NOT to roll out new features, especially those which could be troubling to some users. Really, though, this is something which has become really important to only a few seriously geeky people (me included, obviously) and the bulk of Facebook's user base probably won't even bat an eyelash over it. They aren't going to take the hit from this that those serious geeks think they will. Probably nothing will come from it, aside from those serious geeks leaving Facebook.

Sat, December 8, 2007 @ 12:23 PM

2. Tim Wall wrote:
Good point, Ryan. I agree that very few facebook users will even be aware of this issue. But, to some degree, that is what I think is so threatening about this. It's opt in, so if a person does nothing, their information will be shared. They have to know about it in order to opt out and, as you say, very few probably even know about it. That's scary to me, but I can understand why they did it that way.

Mon, December 10, 2007 @ 4:14 PM

3. Bette Rowe wrote:
So, I know this post is old, but I'm new to Facebook - if they can track where you go, even when you're not online - does signing up for Facebook install some kind of spyware program??? How do they track your activity? thanks

Thu, April 2, 2009 @ 2:30 PM

4. Tim Wall wrote:
@Bette, it's not spyware as you have to be online for them to track your activities, and you have to be visiting one of their partner sites. You can find out more on the Wikipedia entry on Beacon at the following link. Look for the section on "Technology" for an explanation of how it works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_(Facebook)

Fri, April 3, 2009 @ 10:10 AM

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